Tech

Spoken Giants is a new royalty administration agency that claims to be the first of its kind for copyright holders of spoken-word works including comedians, podcasters, speeches, lectures and the like. Founded by former BMI executive Jim King and 800 Pound Gorilla Records co-founders Ryan Bitzer and Damion Greiman, according to the announcement Spoken Giants represents hundreds of members, including Lewis Black, Dan

Better late than never: Disney Plus just added the ability for subscribers to share links to specific titles — like its hit series “The Mandalorian” — with friends and family members on social media and via messaging apps. To share a piece of content, Disney Plus subscribers must tap the new “Share” button found on

TV giant Vizio is folding Inscape, its data and analytics subsidiary, into its TV platform business — a move designed to boost Vizio’s connected-TV ad business and its streaming-app experiences for consumers. With the reorganization, Inscape will continue to power “select measurement and advertising use cases,” but the engineering and technology teams will now be

For many people, the 2020 presidential election isn’t a game. At least one company thinks it could be. After giving users of a mobile-gaming app a chance to win $50,000 if they chose the right outcomes of six different elements of the recent presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden, Fox Bet is offering

European media conglomerate RTL Group has sold its entire stake in BroadbandTV, the digital media and tech company, for $120 million. RTL’s sale of its holding comes as BBTV launched an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and under which BBTV founder and CEO Shahrzad Rafati (pictured above) has become the controlling stakeholder.

Scopely continues to attract buckets of bucks for its free-to-play mobile games business. And after banking $340 million in fresh capital, the company is renewing the hunt for new acquisitions to continue its growth trajectory. With the new funding, L.A.-based Scopely now has a $3.3 billion post-money valuation, nearly doubling the valuation in just under

The Creative Coalition debuted a new public service announcement zooming in on the untold stories of obesity and its ties to COVID-19. The new announcement unpacks that obesity is the greatest risk factor for developing a severe case of coronavirus for people under the age of 60, according to the PSA. “We’re using our voices

Amazon’s Audible audiobook unit wants to become a full-fledged podcast network: It announced that it has added about 100,000 podcast shows — comprising some 3 million episodes — to the service, available free to members and non-members alike. The free podcasts now available on Audible include “Pod Save America,” “You’re Wrong About,” “This American Life,”

T-Mobile took the wraps off its new suite of TVision pay-TV streaming services aimed at cord-cutters — which promise more flexible options for buying over-the-top television. The wireless carrier is providing three separate TVision programming tiers: TVision Live (up to three streams per account), which centers on live sports, news and local TV; TVision Vibe

Just a few weeks before its planned Nov. 19 launch, developer CD Projekt Red has again pushed back its highly anticipated “Cyberpunk 2077” 21 days to Dec. 10. In an announcement on the “Cyberpunk 2077” Twitter page, director Adam Badowski and CD Projekt co-founder and joint CEO Marcin Iwinski cited the struggles of preparing the

T-Mobile is taking an aggressive new swing at the U.S. pay-TV sector, threatening to further roil the market’s dynamics: The carrier announced a new suite of TVision internet packages, available nationwide, that start at just $10 per month. With the new over-the-top TV play, T-Mobile wants to attract cord-cutters — and also poach existing cable

Whitney Houston’s Grammy-winning smash “I Will Always Love You” is the fourth song from the ’90s — and the first solo track from the decade — to join YouTube’s billion-views club. Originally written and recorded by Dolly Parton in 1973, the song was recorded and released by Houston in 1992. The Houston version of “I

Tencent Music Entertainment Group, the leading online music entertainment platform in China, and Merlin, the global digital rights agency for the world’s independent labels, have renewed their multi-year licensing and cooperation agreement. According to the announcement, as part of the renewal, TME and Merlin will “deepen their longstanding strategic partnership, explore ways to drive the

The next generation of consoles is almost here. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and the lower-priced Series S both hit the market on Nov. 10 (two days before its competition, Sony’s PlayStation 5, debuts), and the hardware giant is taking a very different approach to this newest round of hardware than in past generations. Microsoft has

UPDATED: Twitch, the rapidly growing livestreaming platform, and its owner Amazon received a blistering letter on Thursday signed by multiple major U.S. music organizations including the RIAA, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Music Managers Forum, the American Association of Independent Music, SAG-AFTRA and more than a dozen others over its lack

Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung Electronics who transformed the company into the world’s largest producer of smartphones, memory chips and televisions, has died. He was 78. Samsung announced in a statement that Lee died on Sunday, though an exact cause was not given. A heart attack that Lee suffered in 2014 had kept him

Here comes a new big-data approach trying to crack the age-old problem of understanding what a TV show or movie is really about. Entertainment-analytics startup Vody is coming out of stealth after more than two years of development and testing. Co-founders and co-CEOs Stephanie Horbaczewski and Jeremy Houghton, who both were previously top execs at

It could be quite a fire sale after Quibi’s nearly $2 billion flameout: The Jeffrey Katzenberg-founded company has tapped LionTree to manage the process of selling Quibi’s assets, following its decision to shut down. A rep for LionTree confirmed that the firm has been enlisted by Quibi in an advisory capacity to evaluate in-bound inquiries

Prominent media technologists discussed how the pandemic has altered their content flow as distribution platforms for digital entertainment see increased viewership. Presented by Western Digital, Variety hosted the Innovators in Media Technology Management, a panel with leading executives as part of the Variety Streaming Room series. The conversation, moderated by Variety’s New York digital editor

Tencent Pictures this week stepped out alongside fellow Tencent subsidiaries New Classics Media and China Literature (aka Yuewen Media) to present for the first time a joint, collaborative film and TV production strategy. Tencent Pictures and Hong Kong-listed e-book platform China Literature were both established in 2015. Production firm New Classics Media was established in

Quibi, a day after announcing it will shut down less than seven months after launching, told customers Thursday that it expects to shut off the streaming service “on or about” Dec. 1. The company, led by founder and ex-movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, also said it doesn’t know what will happen to

PlayStation 5, Sony’s next-generation console, will have a batch of entertainment apps when it ships next month — and a dedicated remote control. Set to ship starting Nov. 12, the PS5’s initial lineup will include apps for Apple TV, Disney Plus, Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Hulu, Amazon’s Twitch, and WarnerMedia’s Crunchyroll anime service. Services absent from

Hulu is dropping Sinclair Broadcast Group’s portfolio of Fox Sports-branded and other regional sports networks from its live-TV packages, effective Friday. As of Oct. 23, 2020, Hulu “will no longer have the rights to distribute certain Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that are currently included with your Hulu + Live TV plan” provided by Sinclair, the

SiriusXM continues to report progress in its contract negotiations with star personality Howard Stern as the company revealed its third-quarter earnings, with revenue up 1% at $2.025 billion and income up 11% to $272 million. Stern’s contract expires at the end of the year and has been a constant topic of conversation in the company’s business

Interactive-video firm Eko says it will continue to pursue its patent and trade-secret theft litigation against Quibi, after Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman announced the startup will wind down operations and seek to sell its assets less than seven months after Quibi launched. New York-based Eko sued Quibi in March for allegedly infringing one of

AT&T touted the growth of WarnerMedia’s HBO Max premium streamer, with activations more than doubling in the third quarter to 8.6 million. All told, 28.7 million customers were eligible to get HBO Max at the end of Q3. As of the end of September, HBO and HBO Max subscribers in the U.S. together reached 38

It’s officially the end of the road for Quibi — a quick end for the quick-bite video startup. The company, led by founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, confirmed that it intends “to wind down its business operations and initiate a process to sell its assets.” The shutdown comes just a little over six

Boutique production firm Lucia Entertainment is launching “Go Green,” a new digital series aimed at inspiring Americans to reduce their carbon footprint, save money, and live a healthy life through clean energy solutions — with an assist from actors Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle, who make cameo appearances in the show. The unscripted, short-form digital

UPDATED: Quibi, the struggling short-form mobile video startup led by founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, is shutting shut down the company after failing to find a buyer, according to a new report. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Katzenberg called investor Wednesday to tell them Quibi was shuttering. That came after a

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitch, the popular video game livestreaming platform, to get out the vote — to 435,000 simultaneous viewers. On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez announced on Twitter that she was looking to play “Among Us,” the massively popular murder mystery video game, on Twitch to encourage people to vote. On Tuesday night, she launched